(continued from Part One; still responding to the Wall St Journal article “Why the Expats Left Paris”)

Part Three: Beyond an “American” in Paris

Is anyone else as tired of the word “expat” as I am? The word has become self-aggrandizing or vaguely insulting, and no longer serves its semantic purpose (that of distinguishing one who lives outside his native country). Instead, it seems to me to have become a euphemism for “pretentious loser.”

Still, for want of a better word, it seems we’re stuck with it. But the phrase we can try to do away with in anything other than a historical sense is that that clunky old “American in Paris.”  Are there any Americans in town who do not grimace sardonically when someone says to them, “ah oui, encore un américain à Paris?” It’s like you’re being accused of having no will or imagination of your own—as if all you can do is aspire to live someone else’s life. All the Americans in Paris I know are at the ready to refute the myth, to insist they came to Paris for various reasons (French love interest, studies, job, random geographical decision) but none would agree they came to perpetuate the myth of the expatriates of the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s.

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